We must stop Bosnia becoming another Libya

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Ominous echoes suggest the country is heading for break-up and conflict. Our hands-off policy has to end

Nothing better illustrates the West’s susceptibility to attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder than its contrasting policies towards Libya and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Maximum activity is applied “to prevent Libya becoming
another Bosnia”; but inaction, born of fatigue, somnolence and simple bad
judgment, is the response to Bosnia, as it slides back towards the status of
a failed state, and possibly one at conflict with itself.

In December 2009, I joined William Hague, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, to
warn that, without stronger action to reverse the nationalist dynamic in
Bosnia, there was a real risk that the country would break down into
independent ethnic